How much Business Are You Missing Out on By Not Doing This?

How much business are you missing out on by not following up your prospects? If you don’t track it I propose that it’s quite a lot!

If you don’t follow up on leads with a robust system your are sure to be wasting a large part of your marketing spend, this means you’re wasting money and working too many hours to catch up – so this blog post could save you a great deal of money and time – wow – better read on then!

Following up on leads is obvious really, but so many people fail to do it so I’d like to give you a little idea for how to do this that’s really simple that you can start today:

1. Create a ‘prospect form’ in a word processor

Include:

Name

Business

Phone

Email

What prompted the call today

When you will follow them up again

THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF BUSINESS if you can convert that lead

2. Create a spreadsheet

Include the prospects name, business and estimated business value. Then have the spreadsheet total the value for all leads to date.

3. File the prospect forms

File these forms by month. Put all forms for one month in a binder and label them with the current month.

4. Follow up

Set a time aside each month to follow up these leads. Take all the forms out from the previous month and follow them all up. If they convert remove them from the folder and the spreadsheet. Replace them in the folder if they do not convert.

5 . Repeat

Repeat this process 3 times. If the prospect still does not convert file the folder away and dig out again in 6 months and repeat the process.

Following this process means you will have a system whereby you can follow up your leads AND a value for your ‘sales funnel’ or non’converted leads.

Over time this WILL amaze you as to how the value of that spreadsheet grows, and its a great way to focus your marketing efforts on converting those clients that didn’t convert first time round.

Automate the Process

So, do I do this myself? Nope, I automate the process using Sage Act – but the principle remains the same. Sage ACT reminds me to call the prospect and manages my sales funnel for me providing me useful metrics of where people are in my conversion process and what the overall value of the funnel is. Sage ACT calls this an ‘opportunity’ and I can view the value of all my opportunities at varying stages of the process.

I’ve done this a few times in different businesses and the average amount of business sitting in the funnel like this is about 1.5-2 times annual turnover! WOW – serious bucks sitting there huh?

So, what are you going to do right now to stop procrastinating and start following up prospects to grow your business?